On May 19, 2022 at 2:12:54 AM, Cyril Brulebois <k...@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi Stephen, > > Stephen Gelman <ssg...@debian.org> (2022-05-17): > > In trying to track down this bug, I found that > > partman-auto-lvm/guided_size was added and according to > > > https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/partman-auto-lvm/-/blob/master/debian/partman-auto-lvm.templates#L77-L79 > , > > defaults to a value of "some number". Unsurprisingly, this is not a > > valid number configuration option, so the maximum size doesn't get set > > properly. Setting "d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string max" in my > > preseed restores the previous behavior. I believe there are two issues > > here: > > > 1. "partman-auto-lvm/guided_size" should default to "max" in order to > > maintain compatibility with previous releases. > > 2. When "partman-auto-lvm/guided_size" is set to an invalid value it > > seems that the code does not behave properly. I'm not sure what behavior > > I'd expect, but I don't think the behavior I am seeing of picking the > > minimum size for each partition is correct. > > > Without trying to second guess why this default value is there instead > of something else, you can check partman-auto-lvm/perform_recipe_by_lvm > and the few db_subst calls. > > I suppose the big difference between preseeding and not preseeding is the > seen flag checked at the top of the while loop. I don't remember all the > details around preseeding but I'd think "auto" means most questions are > flagged as seen, which means you don't get the default replacement you'd > get with an interactive installation. > > > I'm not too sure how to best approach a possible fix. While the issue > has cost you some debugging time, having to be explicit about how much > space should be used for LVM doesn't look /that/ bad to me (even if that > means that recipes that had been working for some releases no longer > do). > > That being said, maybe there are some places in the documentation and/or > examples where we should add that. > > > Cheers, > -- > Cyril Brulebois (k...@debian.org) <https://debamax.com/> > D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant > Understood. I do think that newer example preseeds have partman-auto-lvm/guided_size set to max, so there shouldn’t be a documentation issue (other than the general lack of documentation around the preseed file but that is unrelated to this!) My personal preference would be for the debian-installer to raise an error if this value is missing - that would have saved me a ton of debugging time. Expecting it to be set does seem very reasonable to me, but I think if an older preseed isn’t going to work properly we at least owe it to the user to surface a proper error message. Stephen
